Crowd Distribution and Location Preference

Weizi Li, Zichao Di, and Jan M. Allbeck

Abstract

Most crowd simulators focus on navigation
and agents flow. In this paper, we present
another perspective which concentrates on the
overall distribution of virtual agents and uses
psychological preferences for choosing goal
locations. Both observation and published theory
indicate that most people prefer to maintain
their personal space as event spaces increase in
density, particularly when they have no previous
relationship to other individuals. The geometric
structure that naturally forms could be highly
approximated by a Voronoi tessellation. Our
method allows users to specify sub-regions
of an environment and tag the regions with
information (e.g. permitted densities and
features). A Centroidal Voronoi Tessellation
(CVT) is then automatically constructed over
the entire virtual world. The centers of mass of
each resulting cell are taken as potential agent
goal locations. Individual virtual agents then
have the ability to choose their preferred goal
locations based on their own characteristics
(e.g. personality traits, needs, and interests), the
CVT, and semantic features of the sub-regions.
This method results in more meaningful crowd
simulations with minimal additional user effort.